Worldpay and Mastercard have entered a strategic partnership, aimed at expanding acceptance options and making digital payments more secure.

What Does the Partnership Entail?

Under the partnership, Worldpay will offer its “Pay By Bank” app, created by Mastercard’s Vocalink business, to UK merchants from early 2019.

Pay By Bank provides access to a customer’s bank account to make secure digital payments through a smartphone.

The app was developed by Vocalink’s Zapp in 2013 with the aim of bringing real-time mobile payment by integrating tapping into Faster Payments via app.

The initiative signed up numerous high profile retailers, but is currently still only available to users of Barclays’ Pingit app.

Kevin McCarten, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Worldpay commented: “Through this partnership, Worldpay and Mastercard will help expand payments acceptance options for U.K. consumers and retailers by leveraging account-to-account payments technology with Mastercard’s Pay by Bank’ app.”

Mark Barnett, President of Mastercard in the UK, Nordics, and Baltics added: “We’re maximising each other’s ability to provide the choices in fast and convenient ways to pay. In particular, ‘Pay by Bank’ app is set to play a big role in U.K. digital commerce, as more banks and merchants offer this as a payment option to millions of their customers.”

Challenger and High Street banks such as Starling Bank, RBS, HSBC, Halifax and Lloyds Bank all have ‘Pay By Bank’ app services available.

Making Digital Payments More Secure

Alongside providing the digital payments app, Worldpay have joined Mastercard and other payment industry companies to develop a single, common checkout button.

The service is being developed at the moment whilst Worldpay continues to support its clients with Masterpass and other ecommerce solutions.

Additional services will also be enabled, including Mastercard’s Digital Enablement Service, Moneysend and Vantiv’s FastAccess.

Merchants who are with Worldpay can expect to receive a settlement payout to Mastercard debit cards in minutes rather than wait one-to-three days for an automated clearing house (ACH) transaction.